Writer-director Roderick MacKay’s “The Furnace” is a solid if somewhat slow Australian variation on the “gold fever leads to gold madness” “Treasure of Sierra Madre” theme.

MacKay’s debut feature is about a blood-stained quest to get stolen gold out of the Outback in 1897, the latter years of that Down Under experiment in using camels as desert transport and impressing Afghans, Sikhs and others from the sandy quarters of The Empire to drive them.

As a subtext, the film shows the connection many of this camel drivers made with the country’s other outcast class — Aborigines. So MacKay makes some pointed observations about Aussie racism, as well.

Hanif (Ahmed Malek of “The Swimmers”) and Jundah (Kaushik Das of “The Dog Days of Christmas) are “cameleers,” drover-partners trying to make a business out of the work that began as “indentured servitude.” Hanif, a Muslim, wants to save enough to go home to Afghanistan. Jundah, who is Sikh, is more resigned to this place and its people — Aboriginies like their friend Woorak (Baykali Ganambarr of “The Nightengale”).

The most important thing they all have in common? They’re all “Boy” to any white man they meet, with the South Asians — Sunni, Shia and Sikh — merely lumped together as “Ghans” to the whites.

The faintest hint of talking back at a well, a simple “No problem,” gets Jundah murdered. Woorak and his spear provide swift retribution to the killer.

Hanif gives some thought to laying low with Woorak’s tribe before going off on his own. But stumbling across the scene of a shoot-out changes his mind. The lone survivor (David Wenham of “300) needs medical help.

Oh, and don’t forget my “goods.” This is the aftermath of a gold heist. He has crown-stamped ingots, and all belong to him since everybody else is dead.

The Aborogines who figure this out eventually chase them away, fretting over “the dust storm you kick up behind you.”

Because soon a special crown army “gold squad” (Jay Ryan, Samson Coulter and Erik Thompson) are on their trail. But if our desert duo can make it to a town with an off-the-books smelter, they’ll be rich, with Hanif able to return home.

The film follows a generally predictable path with many of the usual obstacles — mutual mistrust, third party, fourth party and fifth party interfence, the risk of dying of thirst.

That “path” includes personal story arcs the characters traverse, something MacKay handles a bit more clumsily. Some of the action beats digress from the leads and feel arbitrary in their inclusion.

But it’s a sturdy yarn that hits many of the right notes, with Malek and Wenham setting off a few sparks and the quarrelsome army squad setting off others, as they have as many problems among themselves as with assorted “others,” most of them labeled with racial slurs.

And the bloodletting, when it comes, it as pitiless as it would have been anywhere that called itself a “frontier” whose inhabitants reconciled themselves to “life is cheap” as a creed.

Rating: TV-MA, violence

Cast: Ahmed Malek, David Wenham, Baykali Ganambarr, Jay Ryan,
Trevor Jamieson and Erik Thompson

Credits: Scripted and directed by Roderick MacKay. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:56